


Good Night, Sweet Prince

by dsa_archivist



Category: due South
Genre: Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1999-03-14
Updated: 1999-03-14
Packaged: 2018-11-10 17:49:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11131782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsa_archivist/pseuds/dsa_archivist
Summary: Ray goes to Fraser's apartment to pay his last respects to his friend.





	Good Night, Sweet Prince

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Speranza, the archivist: this story was once archived at [Due South Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Due_South_Archive). To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Due South Archive collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/duesoutharchive).

Good Night, Sweet Prince

# Good Night, Sweet Prince

### by Diana Read

**Drama, PG.** Today, 31 July, 1996, I checked the DS List and got the sad news. The only way I was able to cope with the intense emotions that ensued was by writing the following monologue. In my distraught condition it seems necessary--although it probably isn't--to point out that Fraser represents _due South_ , and the person speaking represents All of Us. 

* * *

It was bad enough when we buried Gardino. 

Yeah, it was bad, losing Louis. It hit us all pretty hard; it reminded us of something we'd rather forget, the consciousness that it could happen to any one of us, any time. Yeah, it was bad. 

But it wasn't like this. God in heaven, it wasn't like this! 

I'm standing here in your empty apartment, the place you left about midnight last night, the place that'll never again know the sound of your boots tapping across its bare floor. In the space you used for a bedroom, your jeans and red flannel shirt are hanging neatly on a hook behind the door. Your bed is made, as if you expected to be coming back to it: in the kitchen, Dief's bowl is empty, wiped clean by his slick tongue. This place will never again hear the scrabble of paws across its boards, either; Dief went with you. 

You lived spare, didn't you, Fraser? What was your motto, anyway--your personal one, not the Mountie one. Was it "A rolling stone gathers no moss?" There's so little of you left here: I don't get any vibes, any echoes at all of the towering spirit that inhabited the space between these walls. You didn't have much, you didn't even seem to want much: that's one of the reasons I always thought of you as a saint, you know? You didn't need "things": you weren't their slave. You carried everything you ever needed in your head, didn't you? And your heart? 

Not to mention your hat. I'm standing here, holding it in my hands, turning it over and over. I guess this is your spare Stetson; you were wearing your other one when it happened. It survived, but they took it for evidence. You know what? I don't even have a picture to remember you by. Huh! I guess I could get Elaine to make me a drawing of you, from memory: what the hell, all her composite sketches look like you anyway. 

Nah, I don't need a picture to remember you by. How could I forget you? I can close my eyes and see your face now. I can see you as you looked the last time I saw you, and the first: I couldn't believe there was anyone like you in the world. I thought you were a space cadet when I met you, I really did. But I soon found out different, didn't I, Benny? 

We were a team. Good cop, bad cop, with you always the good. Your mannerly ways sometimes got results when my smart-aleck attitude failed. And you'd always come out with something that amazed me--after I finished barfing in disgust at your methods. You were a walking encyclopedia, but you were also a good detective: the best. 

Y'know, I never told you, but I looked up to you. You were so much finer than the average human being. There you were, so good and pure and decent, living in that lousy neighborhood, and instead of it dragging you down, you brought it _up_. Your neighbors, scuzzballs that most of 'em are, started acting a little more house-proud after you moved in. The way you treated people--always so courteous, always friendly, no matter how high or low they were--made everyone respect you. You were like a clean, fresh blanket of snow on a dirty street: because you were what you were, people forgot what a crummy neighborhood it was. 

It was the same that time you went to jail, partly on my account. You treated the other inmates decently and that was one time it sure paid off--we'd have been sunk if that big guy hadn't come to our rescue at the last minute. 

So many cases we solved together! God, sometimes you drove me crazy, and I was short-tempered with you. I regret that now. I wish I could take it all back, every cross word I ever gave you. Every jealous, petty thought I ever had about you. 

But y'know something, Benny? As good-looking as you were, as much as all those women, including my own sister, were making fools of themselves over you--I never was jealous of you on that account. You just didn't seem to know you were good-looking. You never used it to your own advantage. You acted like you just didn't know what was the matter with all those women! 

Yeah, only one woman ever got to you. If I ever get my hands on her...ah, well, what do I care? She can't hurt you now. Frannie, she's so broken up she hasn't come out of her room since we got the news early this morning. In her own cracked-up way, I think she was really fond of you. I couldn't picture you two married, though--any more than I could've seen you with Victoria on a permanent basis. No, if you'd lived, you would have married Dragon Lady sooner or later. Yeah, you would! Don't look at me with that blank, blue-eyed gaze, Fraser, and say, "I have no idea what you re talking about." I knew damn well you liked her. You just weren't ever going to tell me about it! 

I'm wandering around now, still holding your Stetson in my hand, looking out the window, wondering what I'm going to do with your dad's footlocker and the few things you've left behind. What would you have liked me to do with 'em, Benny? 

Christ, Benny, why'd you have to die and leave me alone? Why didn't you take me with you? Or let me die in your place? I would gladly have traded my life for yours. 

Your luck finally ran out, in that dark alley in the wee hours of this morning. One alley too many, one time too many of tempting Fate. Your Stetson, that I sometimes used to think had magical powers, didn't protect you this morning. The medical examiner said you died first, and Dief died when he went for your attacker. They got a suspect in lockup right this minute. He has your blood on his clothes. And your blood, red on that red uniform...well, today is the first time anyone's seen me cry since I was eight years old. 

We'll bury you tomorrow, here in Chicago, your adopted home town. You have no kin that we know of, so there's no one to claim your remains. You left no will, so I don't know what'll happen to your cabin up north. God, remember when we went up there to rebuild it? That plane crash.. .you going blind for a while...then the two of us rafting down the river...we were happy, then, and we didn't even know it. 

Where are you now, Benny? Here in Chicago still? Or are you roaming the Territories on a dog sled, with Dief proudly leading a team of huskies over a dazzling white snow field along the shores of a frozen lake? 

Or are you riding one of those black RCMP horses hell for leather, tearing across those blue Alberta skies? 

You're not dead, Fraser. Not to me. You're gonna ride forever across the scorched landscape of my soul. Every time I bite back a sarcastic retort and say something polite, it'll be because you taught me how to behave. Every time I go out of my way to help someone, it'll be because I remember how you always thought of others, never yourself. And every time I refuse to take the easy way out, take a moral shortcut, as it were...I'll remember you and how you always knew where your duty lay. 

What _was_ your motto, Benny? Was it "Live each day as if it were your last?" 

Was it "Love thy neighbor as thyself?" 

I'll never know. But one thing I do know, as sure as I'm standing here in your empty apartment, with the late afternoon sunlight slanting across the floor: you were a prince among men. 

And although you don't have much in common with that poor, crazy prince in Denmark, hundreds of years ago, somehow the poet's farewell to him seems just as fitting for you: 

_"Good night, sweet prince,_  
_And may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."_  


****

The End  


* * *

© Copyright 31 July 1996 by Diana Read on all original story content. Not meant to infringe on copyrights held by CBS, Alliance, CTV or any other copyright holders for Due South. Please do not reproduce for anything other than personal reading use without written consent of the author. Comments may be directed to. 

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End file.
